Emergencies and Responsabilities
by Karen Hikari
Summary: It had taken him longer than he was proud to admit, but he wanted to be there for his brothers and sisters, to get to know them in true, to be a good example in their lives, to make them feel like they had a home and a family, to let them know they were worth it, like no one had done with him as a child. Just a little of Leo struggling to be a "good" head conselour for his siblings


**Okay guys, guess who has come back from the dead? Okay, maybe I exaggerated, but it feels a bit like that! I know it's been a long time since I published anything, but what can I say, school has been torture. I promise I'll find the perfect balance between this life and my school life, but for now this will have to do.**

 **This little something has been written for a while now. Actually, since before I even read The Trials of Apollo, but here go my explanations: you know how I am with children-I can't stand them in real life but tehy're nice enough as long as they are fictional. That makes Harley the perfect prototipe for a character I'll ike because, point number one, he's a young boy and, point number two, he's a son of Hephaestus, whom I'm incredibly fond of.**

 **On the other hand, Leo, as you all know, is a personal favorite, and, well, what can I say, the idea of him, who he perceives as so broken and unworthy realizing he is actually very capable and taking the responsability of his siblings it just...**

 **I'm just very propud of my little baby, okay? Very, very proud, taht's all I have to say.**

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 ** _Emergencies and Responsibilities_**

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If he were to be honest with himself, once in a while Leo Valdez couldn't help but wonder why he had been chosen head counselor of his cabin. Of course he'd helped save the world and all, but for the gods' sake, he had gone on a mission that could be deathly to free the Queen of Olympus practically the day after he'd discovered he was a demigod and learned that the ancient deities were real. It honestly didn't seem a wise decision to make.

For example, he might have been in camp for some months now after his return saving Hera, but he was still learning the rules of the camp, and seeing as he was rather fond of breaking them, it was plainly obvious that something would potentially go wrong with him as a leader.

On other news, he also didn't know much of his siblings other than their names, and as much as he wanted to act like that was nothing, the camp was supposed to feel like home, like family, more in the emotional sense than the sanguine one. Quite honestly, it seemed unfair to him that the demigod in charge of a cabin could hardly remember the ages of the siblings he was supposed to look after.

All of that, added to how he, sometimes, still felt the urge to simply send everything to Tartarus and flee the place had him thinking that maybe, just maybe, it would be better for someone like Jake or Nyssa, for someone who actually knew how things were done at the camp and who had been in there for years took the place.

Piper, however, didn't seem convinced by that. 'No', she'd said when he had finally dared question how she managed to be the leader of her cabin when she was as new at it as Leo himself was. 'It's not about how long you've been at Camp Half-Blood, but rather about how interested you are in your cabin mates. And, Leo, c'mon, I know you can do this'.

It was thanks to the daughter of Aphrodite that he had finally decided that, maybe, even when it was so hard to believe, he really was meant to be the head counselor of Cabin 9. It was only thanks to Piper that he had decided that, wise or not, the decision had already been made and, good or bad, he was now responsible of taking care of his siblings, and to be sincere, he actually wanted to do it.

It had taken him longer than he was proud to admit, but he wanted to do it―to be there for his brothers and sisters, to get to know them in true, to be a good example in their lives, to make them feel like they had a home and a family, to let them know they were worth it, like no one had done with him as a child.

He didn't notice, though, that some of those cabin mates actually looked up to him, without mattering to them that Leo didn't quite feel like there was nothing they should admire. That was to say, sure, he'd saved the world, but, personally, in a me-and-you kind of way, he'd done very little to deserve any admiration from his siblings.

The son of Hephaestus came to realize that, in truth, he was already trying hard enough until several incidents that proved him his opinion about himself had been wrong all along and made him dwell on how, confused as he'd been, he had managed to do a fair good job as a leader. Not that he could be blamed, it was indeed something hard to believe.

Now, to say that Leo Valdez had no idea of what to do when a medic emergency appeared was an understandment, but it was also not the brightest idea to leave a bunch of teenagers in charge of forges and then expect no accidents to happen either, and Leo declared himself innocent of having such an idea.

It all occurred during a summer afternoon after dinner, when Leo counted the members of his cabin so he could turn the lights off and officially lock the door from inside to avoid getting attacked by a hungry harpy ―what, he hadn't survived until then only to be eaten by a monster right there in Camp Half-Blood. He had no idea about whether or not if the threats were real, but he was not going to risk it― that he noticed Harley was missing.

Dwelling on it, he hadn't seen the kid at the table either. Sighing, Leo checked his watch―8:30. Lights were supposed to be out at nine.

Harley was mostly a responsible little dude, not at all what Leo would have imagined an eight-year-old to be, and, somehow, everyone at the camp seemed fine with leaving him in the forges to work with fire only because he was a child of Hephaestus, which could have explained why Harley was more mature than others his age and rarely disobeyed an order or broke the rules.

This was, to be honest, the first time he gave Leo a problem, and thus the Latino was more worried than he was mad.

Somehow, though, he figured that the first place he should look Harley at were precisely the forges. Perhaps his godly half-blood siblings were all too different to be identified as brothers when talking about physical appearance, but if there was something that they all had in common that surely was their stubbornness.

Gods, while building the _Argo II_ he had practically spent weeks in a row working, barely stopping to eat and sleep for a couple of hours, having received a special permission from Chiron for harpies not to bother him, so he could pretty much understand that Harley had been too caught up in whatever he was working on to notice his siblings leaving for the night or even the seashell calling for dinner.

Said and done, just a few minutes after taking note on Harley's disappearance Leo was already out of the cabin and in his way to the forges.

Later on he would ask himself what he was expecting to find, but in all honesty, he didn't know, he was only certain that what he found was in no way what he _expected_ to.

There wasn't a disaster, not an explosion that had anticipated him to meet a problem, just the same forges he'd watched daily for so long now. It wasn't until he neared the place that he knew something was wrong.

While at first all he could listen coming from inside was the drumming of a hammer against a piece of metal, suddenly a scream came and then something that sounded suspiciously like whimpers mixed with shy curses.

Good, he thought, _now_ he was worried. And the door was closed. Freaking hell, who had put the lock there? Yes, yes, that had been him, but only because Nyssa insisted that after the curse of Hephaestus and the problems with the automatons they shouldn't take chances.

After cursing himself, Leo hurried to take out the keys he'd fortunately carried with him so he could enter and find his brother in the place.

For his relief ―at least for the first two seconds, then said emotion became panic― it didn't take much from him to spot the boy, hunched over his usual worktable while clutching his right arm.

"Holy gods, Harley, do you know what time it is?" was the only thing that came to his mind when he had to say something. _Great, Valdez_ , he mentally smacked himself, as he connected the dots.

Alright, there had been an accident, probably a burn or something of the kind for what he could tell. Alright, fine, he could deal with this, he had it covered.

He knew that the tolerance for fire and heat of the members of the ninth cabin had often been flattered, but he had no vote or whatsoever on the matter plainly because he was immune to fire in its total and thus whatever he said most likely would turn out as inaccurate for the others so, really, what was he supposed to do?

"Probably past eight" Harley muttered through clenched teeth, answering the older boy's earlier question.

"Oh my gods, who cares?" Leo said, more to himself than to his brother as he kneeled down in front of the other son of Hephaestus so he could be eye-level with him. "What happened?"

"Spark" the boy replied, grimacing when Leo clumsily took his right arm to examine it.

"Sure" the Latino nodded, unable to think of anything else to say. Sometimes, when working directly with fire or with boiling oil it happened that a fragment of the blazing coal or a drop of the hot liquid jumped and reached the worker in an arm or even in the face.

Most of times it wasn't dangerous and didn't even need medical treatment, not causing anything else than a hiss from the victim and a red mark that later disappeared, but sometimes it _did_ cause some damage.

To be honest, Leo had never, never once asked himself how to treat a burn. In the name of the gods, he didn't need to, why would he even bother with it? But there was something in his brother's distressed expression that made him wish he had.

" _Sana, sana, colita de rana, si no sana hoy sanará mañana*_ " he recited without thinking, his mind far away, as he caressed the wounded skin, repeating almost in automatic something that his mother used to say him as a child whenever he fell or scrapped a knew―which had happened quite a bunch of times.

"What was that?" Harley questioned, pain suddenly forgotten due to his brother's strange behavior.

"A Latino healing spell" he offered, only stopping to realize it sounded more intelligent in his mind than out of his mouth when he received an imperturbable glare from his youngest sibling. "I'm taking you to the infirmary right now" he proposed in return.

Piper was right, he thought later that night for the first time, perhaps no one was prepared for when emergencies came, but it was the way in which you reacted to them what spoke tons about whether or not if you were prepared for a leading role. Like many other things, what mattered wasn't what you knew or didn't know, but rather the fact that you faced your own ignorance and marched on or instead stepped back.

Fortunately, Harley's injury wasn't serious―he only needed an ointment that smelled like seven hells but worked and a couple of days of rest, and to know of the young boy's well-being seriously was like lifting a weight from the Latino's chest.

If after that Leo got the habit of counting his siblings ―starting from youngest to oldest― before closing the forges instead of after dinner, either no one noticed it or decided it wasn't related.

On the other hand, what might or might not have something to do with that little incident was how later that week he placed an emergency button on each and every one of the worktables at the forges that set an alarm off firstly in the infirmary and a second on in his watch when pressed.

What, if he was head counselor of Cabin 9 he needed to make justice to the title and show off some responsibility, and no matter how Nyssa ―or half of the cabin, for that matter― rolled her eyes and told him they didn't need such a thing, the fond smile of her lips gave her away. On the other hand, just seeing Harley's grateful eyes made it worth it.

* * *

 **So... how did it go? Was the waiting worth it? Yes, no, have you ever thought about Cabin 9 and their members? Because (as if it's not already very, very obvious) I have.**

 ***Well, we don't call it a "spell", but I saw a meme about that on Facebook and I immediatly thought of Leo. Then things just... wrote themselves... The literal translation is "Heal, heal, small frog's tail, if it doesn't heal today it'll heal tomorrow". Latino mothers do say that while rubbing their children's cuts and bruises, if you're wondering!**

 **That's all for now, I really hope I can come soon despite my upcoming exams. Love you all!**


End file.
